HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sirdogealot

127 karma · joined March 12, 2014

submissionscomments
sirdogealot··on Google Domains Launches to All in U.S
>There's no support to reach out to

This is my biggest fear when using anything Google-related.

They are notoriously difficult to get in touch with, and as such I probably wouldn't even considering signing up for this service.

Getting access to a real person when there is a problem with one of my domains is very valuable to me.

sirdogealot··on 3-D Printed Keys Can Pick High-Security Locks in Seconds
This really hit me recently when I left the house after doing some cryptography research.

When I "locked" the wooden door with a piece of metal that has been photographed by probably countless cameras... I just had to laugh at myself and wonder why I bad been programmed to do this seemingly pointless action my entire life.

sirdogealot··on Scientists at Stanford develop water splitter that runs on ordinary AAA battery
This isn't news.

"The researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy."

Unfortunately that approach would be less efficient that simply transferring the electrical energy to an electric motor.

Light > Electricity > Hydrogen > Electricity > Electric Motor

is longer than

Light > Electricity > Electric Motor

sirdogealot··on Show HN: Omive – Find movies based on genre, rating, directors and more
Looks great!

But your "votes" section that I browsed seems to be listed rather oddly.

Items seem to be listed randomly.

They don't seem to be listed by title, date, number of votes, overall score, or anything really.

It would be nice too if you allowed the user to rank each list by whichever column they felt was most important to them.

sirdogealot··on StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human
I remember clicking through those same pictures a few days back and I was under the impression that I was telling the observers what pictures I thought were more beautiful, not safer.

Did they just re-label the same data here or is this another separate program?

sirdogealot··on How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will
They were in business for 40 years... and Google maps just recently started incorrectly listing their hours.

I highly doubt that the google maps error caused or even contributed to the downfall of their apparently well established business.

sirdogealot··on Things You Should Know About Tor
>They have been able to compromise certain Tor users in specific situations. Historically this has been done by finding an exploit for the Tor Browser Bundle or by exploiting a user that has misconfigured Tor.

I'm not touching TOR until I figure out how they managed to capture Ross Ulbricht.

I highly doubt that he had his TOR misconfigured.

sirdogealot··on Sleep as a Competitive Advantage
>The two techniques that most help me to fall asleep when I’m under pressure are to write down what’s on my mind (to get it off my mind) and to breathe deeply if I’m still staying awake — in to a count of three, out to a count of six.

A friend of mine once told me as I was feigning sleep one evening as usual to: "just breathe like you are already asleep"

And 5 minutes later I was out like a light.

sirdogealot··on Q&A With Mt. Gox’s Karpelès: What Went Wrong?
Bingo. Bang on.

This is exactly what I meant.

sirdogealot··on OBC.net, an example of good web design for all big brands
This website's UX is just amazing.

There are at least 2, sometimes 3 suggestive links enticing you to view the next section of the single homepage.

I must say, good show OCB.

They could certainly stand to lose the flash requirement but other than that it's a pretty great brand oriented website.

sirdogealot··on Q&A With Mt. Gox’s Karpelès: What Went Wrong?
The willy report depicts whale buy bots that were buying large amounts of Bitcoin on a drip feed styled system.

The "investigator" of the free willy report got it wrong.

sirdogealot··on Q&A With Mt. Gox’s Karpelès: What Went Wrong?
The willy report was quickly debunked as being FUD.

Those bots were just the dark pool bots that larger players paid Mt Gox to buy large amounts of Bitcoin on a drip feed system over time so as not to spook the markets.

sirdogealot··on I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own
What's so fake about it?

Completing a list of criteria and scoring well on standardized tests is pretty much all that qualifies somebody for a "degree" from any one of our current post secondary insitutions.

When you wrote "fake Bachelor's degree from some fake accreditation system" I assumed you were talking about the Universities and Colleges of the world.

sirdogealot··on On Mining
Satoshi planned for this 51% mining attack problem, and so far we're ok.

His premise was that if a miner ever grew so large as to be capable of performing a 51% attack, that they would have so much wealth invested in the Bitcoin network that they would never dare try anything.

The Bitcoin network is GHash's golden egg laying goose.

The Bitcoin network is entirely safe in GHash's hands imho.

The only real worry comes in when the 51% miner is a bad actor.

>at 35% hashpower and 3 confirmations, this means that GHash can currently steal altcoins from an altcoin exchange with 15.6% success probability – once in every six tries.

Yes, but come on. They never would. Would Bill Gates jump into an active volcano to pick up a penny? Even if he had a 15.6% of picking up that penny without dying a fiery death?

>So what if, for the sake of example, GHash gets over 51% again and starts launching 51% attacks (or, perhaps, even starts launching attacks against altcoin exchanges at 40%)? What happens then?

I'll bite. The ~75% of GHash's mining power that is being pointed at GHash by regular Bitcoin ASIC miners who are enjoying their 0% fees and merged mining drops off overnight. Their domain names are DDOSd at a record breaking level for weeks on end, and every other pool adopts a modified bitcoind that hard-forks (erases) any damange GHash might have caused.

GHash is left with a few thousand nearly worthless Bitcoin (because the USD/BTC value would tank on their 51% attack news) and they are also left without the possibility to basically print themselves free money until the end of time.

sirdogealot··on EBay Valet
I remember ebay consignment stores that existed locally years ago. They took on the order of 50-60% of the total sale price.

It was a horrible deal, and every single one I knew of is now closed for business.

sirdogealot··on Why SSD Drives Destroy Court Evidence, and What Can Be Done About It (2012)
I agree completely.

For myself, it's more the fact that newaccountfool felt the need to ask permission to ask a question.

I love asking questions. And I love answering them whenever possible. I suppose that I wish we all held fewer secrets or assumed secrets.

sirdogealot··on Why SSD Drives Destroy Court Evidence, and What Can Be Done About It (2012)
It's probably something like an FCC compliance requirement.

Does your hard drive provide pointless-something-random functionality that RSA/NSA thought up? No? Well it's not allowed to be sold legally inside the United States, then. Please return with a properly functioning product.

sirdogealot··on Why SSD Drives Destroy Court Evidence, and What Can Be Done About It (2012)
I really wish we could do away with the formalities involved when asking "what do you make?".

It just seems so ancient. I have no problem telling anybody my average income and exactly what it is I do.

It's not like the servant is asking the king how much he makes anymore. We're all pretty much the same monetarily these days.

sirdogealot··on The Pivot
I missed the part where Adams championed the pivot as the greatest business innovation of all time.

He starts out the article rather casually: "You might be interested in some of the things I've discovered.".

If you don't generally care what he has to say, why did you bother to read it? He was only commenting on an interesting aspect of our industry.

You don't see too many car companies pivoting to motorcycles, for example. Learning about "the pivot" is interesting reading to a lot of people, just maybe not for you and I.

sirdogealot··on iOS 8 randomises the MAC address while scanning for WiFi networks
If you're wanting to accomplish this on your desktop/laptop... check out Arch Linux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MAC_Address_Spoofing

Every single time my laptop boots up, it randomizes it's MAC address.

sirdogealot··on End-To-End – OpenPGP Chrome extension from Google
But when displaying the cleartext of a previously sent email or received email... they must be able to decipher the encrypted text in order to display it to the viewer, no?
sirdogealot··on How Different Cultures Understand Time
That's not something you could perceive by looking at the general public.

That's something you can learn by being involved in the north american corporate workforce.

When I took my very first job at mcdonalds I was told "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean."

That work ethic is very prominent in american culture.

If you're not working, you're not achieving your full potential. And that needs to stop.

sirdogealot··on How Different Cultures Understand Time
Ok fine, don't do work, maybe read the paper or do the other boring things you plan on doing every day?

Sketch out a new idea perhaps? Daydream? Read the paper? Or your favorite blog? It's not "wasted time".

All I am saying is it's not the end of the world that somebody is "late". And that having free time isn't a burden if you know what to do with it.

sirdogealot··on GCHQ spy base revealed
It drives me batty looking for things which I am not sure where they are located on a map so thank you for that.
sirdogealot··on Which English?
>Up the audience's expectations, the critics built.

I just got that sentence on asking if it were grammatical or not. I believe that is referred to as yoda grammar?

>Our top three guesses for your English dialect: >1. Canadian >2. American (Standard) >3. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics

Number 1 is correct. However I would admit to speaking american, and I did listen to a lot of rap growing up, so ebonics might be reasonable? But I am a white kid from the rich suburbs, so it's a bit odd but possible I suppose.

sirdogealot··on Show HN: Speech.is interop for Namecoin
There is also:

http://bit.no.com/

and

http://bit.pe/

Follow http://reddit.com/r/namecoin for more like this!

sirdogealot··on How Different Cultures Understand Time
You could, but if you were doing that to spite the other then it wouldn't be a very fruitful business relationship.
sirdogealot··on How Different Cultures Understand Time
Why sit and twiddle your thumbs for an hour (increasingly becoming upset with your business partner) when you can whip out your laptop and get some work done instead? Or your cell phone to talk with the family/friends?
sirdogealot··on GCHQ spy base revealed
Can anyone find the link on Google Maps?
sirdogealot··on Introducing Swift
Because money.
Page 1 of 4Next →